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NEWS RELEASE

02-24-03

Contacts:
James Bernard, VRAC, (515) 294-3092
Pam Reinig, Engineering Communications, (515) 294-0261
Skip Derra, News Service, (515) 294-4917

BERNARD NAMED ASME FELLOW

AMES, Iowa -- James Bernard, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering and director of Iowa State's Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC), has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) International.

ASME Fellows have at least 10 years of active engineering practice and have made significant contributions to the engineering field. ASME, a worldwide engineering society with more than 125,000 members, focuses on technical, educational and research issues.

Bernard is recognized as a leading authority in vehicle dynamics, vehicle simulation and virtual reality applications. In 1990, he was founding director of the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology at Iowa State (now VRAC).

VRAC is an international leader in the application of virtual reality technologies to the challenges of science and engineering. It includes some of the world's most advanced virtual reality facilities and has attracted more than $10 million in ongoing research contracts. Bernard also is a co-founder of Engineering Animation Inc., now part of EDS, which provides internet-based tools for engineering communication.

Bernard received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in engineering mechanics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He began his professional career there in 1971 at the Highway Safety Research Institute, where he led a team that wrote pioneering computer simulations for heavy trucks.

Bernard began his faculty career at Michigan State University, East Lansing, and was the founding director of the Case Center for Computer-Aided Design. In 1983, he joined the mechanical engineering faculty at Iowa State as department chair. He has earned several teaching honors while at Iowa State.

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